We spend today with old and new friends as well as more communing with Momma Nature. We’ve been invited for breakfast to Steve and June Keibler’s who have a beautiful log house a couple of miles east of us along the north shore of Pine Island. They’ve also invited a couple of other neighbors, Dick and Bonnie Sibert, whom I’ve wanted to meet. Dick and Bonnie have lived here for over twenty years and knew Jan’s dad quite well, and Steve knows I’ve been interested in collecting Rozzie stories from anyone up here on the lake.
Steve and June are both devoted naturalists and very knowledgeable with regard to the area’s native orchids, a particular love of Jan’s. So they offer to take us all on a walk in the hope of finding some. Dick can’t join us, but after a short boat and car trip the remaining five of us end up being introduced to a large number of Pink Lady’s Slippers (also known as the Stemless Orchid). We must have seen over a hundred of these beauties, and it wasn’t that long of a walk!
Pink Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium acaule)
Steve (aka “Old Eagle-Eyes”) also spots a solitary example of a far rarer specimen, the small Calypso Orchid, which doesn’t even get a mention in one of the several orchid books that Steve and June own.
Calypso Orchid (Calypso bulbosa)...........and June homing in on it - the plant's not very large!
Steve, Jan, Bonnie and June in the boggy woods.
We get back in the car and the boat and bring Bonnie back to her cabin, and get a tour of their property and her extensive flower and vegetable garden.
Columbines (Aquilegia canadensis) in Bonnie's garden.
Dick and Bonnie Jo.
Bonnie sends us home with some of her lemon thyme, oregano and chives, and a bunch of rhubarb which Jan will be happy to let me eat alone (she’s never liked it).
Back home on our own dock with our Manhattans, the weather is much more pleasant tonight…
A warmer evening...
...on Vermilion Lake. The sunsets gave it its name.
…and it’s a pretty nice sunset.
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